without thinking, gun already in her hand, fired two fast shots through the door window and heard a man scream. . . .
A half-dozen shots poured through the door, straight in, going over Hart’s supine body, and she fired twice more through the wall and heard men yelling, Kristy screaming, lying on the kitchen linoleum with her hands over her ears, and then came another shot, close by, and Dunn was screaming something at her, and she looked that way and saw him crouching by the side door, wild-eyed, gun in his hand, and he fired twice and looked back at her and shouted something, which she didn’t pick up, and then more shots came ripping through the house, shots from high-powered hunting rifles, the way they went through, spraying plaster and wood splinters.
Dunn scrambled across the floor to where she was now lying, with Kristy, and he said, “We’ve got to get upstairs. We’ve got to get higher. If we can get up the stairs to the bathroom, we can get in that old tub and have a close shot at anybody who comes up the stairs. . . . Where’s Bob?”
“Bob’s dead,” she blurted. He looked at her, uncertain, then scrambled past and looked in the front room, then crawled back and said, “We gotta run for it.” He grabbed Kristy and pulled the girl’s hands down, and said, “Kristy, we’ve got to run up the stairs—”
Coakley shouted, “Wait, wait,” and she slid across the kitchen and grabbed the box of photographs and crawled back, her gun rapping on the floor like a horseshoe. A bullet smashed through a wall a foot in front of her face, spraying her with plaster, and she spat and kept going. The house was being torn apart by gunfire, and they all half-crawled, half-ran across the kitchen floor and around the corner and up the stairs, and Dunn pointed down the hall and said, “You guys get in the tub. Lee, you gotta keep the stairway clear. If anybody comes up the stairs, you gotta keep it clear. You understand? You gotta kill ’em.”
“Yeah. Where are you going?”
“Up by the side window. Most of them are in the side yard; I’m gonna try to knock a couple of them down, then I’ll be back here right on top of you.”
“I’ll call Virgil,” Coakley shouted after him as he ran down the hall. “He’s gotta be close.”
VIRGIL CAME UP and Coakley shouted at him, and he said, “Stop yelling, I can’t understand,” and she reined herself in and said, “We’re in the Rouse house. There’re guys outside with guns, lots of them. They’re shooting the place to pieces. There are some of them inside now. We’re upstairs in the bathtub. . . . Bob Hart is dead. . . .”
Kristy was lying under her, weeping, and a rifle bullet, coming at a shallow angle, upward, clanged off the side of the tub, and they both screamed, and Virgil said, “Hold on, five minutes . . . five minutes. Listen for your phone.”
Three shots from the front, Dunn, followed by a volley through the front wall, and Dunn crawled into the hallway and shouted, “How much ammo you got?” and Coakley shouted, “The clip in the gun and one more.”
“Be careful with it,” Dunn shouted, and a slug crashed through a wall above his head and he put a hand over his head and pressed himself to the floor. A man poked his head around the corner of the stairs and saw Dunn on the floor and twisted toward him, with a shotgun, and before he could fire, Coakley shot him in the back and then in the head, and Dunn screamed, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus . . .” and looked down the hall at her, and at the long gun that the man had dropped. He scrambled down the hall and grabbed it, and rolled over and checked the safety, then did another peek down the stairs. All Coakley could see was the dead man’s hand, and Dunn pushed it down the stairs and called, “Good,” and at that moment, a gunshot came through the floor and hit him in the ankle and he screamed, and came flailing down the hall toward Coakley, and dropped beside the bathtub and groaned, “I’m hit . . .”
“Get behind the back of the tub. Nothing’s coming from the back but there’s been some from the front,” Coakley told him.
Dunn obeyed, leaving a trail of blood, and Coakley